On Derrick Walker's website, it claims that the Toyota RV8F in the ChampCar is running 34 inches mercury of boost, what would this figure in PSI? The converting program that I use doesn't have either measurements, and I was wondering how much boost this thing is making compared to some road cars. ( I don't understand inches mercury!)

16.7 psi seems to make sense, as boost was turned down this year, and with how the engine is designed I would say that would be about right, although I was expecting something around about 40psi! (dreaming sorta...)

This tiny amount of boost is the reason that CART will need to dump its current engine soon. When the 2.65 liter V8s were introduced many years ago they ran with a huge amount of boost. In the interest of safety CART decreased the power of the cars every year by reducing the allowable boost. Obviously with only 2 psi of boost they have gotten to the end of its life cycle.

__________________
"Well, what would you do with a brain if you had one?"
Dorothy to the Scarecrow

Also, although champ cars may only run 16 psi of boost, consider that they may be running very high compression ratios. I don't know the proper math, but as an estimate, if champ cars run 16 psi of boost, with a 12:1 compression ratio, it would be like having an engine with a 8:1 compression ratio have like 40 psi (just a guess... my rudimentry math method came out with 24 psi... not what I believe is close to correct...).

I know that F1 cars in the height of the turbo era were running about 80 psi boost during qualifying... Those were the one-lap wonders of engines... I can't even imagine 80 psi of boost...

I think that current champ cars use revs and compression more for power than they do turbo boost. I think with the spec engine they have now, they should reduce compression a bit, reduce revs, beef up the engine a bit, and run more boost on the road courses (obviously less on the ovals). Have it so the bhp on a road course is around 900, but the bhp on an oval would be like 700. With turbos it is very easy to do...